Shower filter?

[allnaturalboy]

My parents bought shower filters for every shower in the house. We have pretty hard water in my area, but this should make it soft, right? I've heard you should use less shampoo and body wash on yourself when your water is softer? Is this true?

I've always washed in extremely hard water, so I've pretty much always had to use a ton of shower gel and shampoo just to get a lather. And if I didn't, I didn't feel very clean.

[Coffeebug]

Yeah with soft water your shampoo goes a lot further. I live in a fairly soft water area and I stayed with a friend who lived in a hard water area and I had to use twice as much for it to foam up! It's crazy the difference it makes!

[Carriegirl]

We have hard water too, with filters on each shower. A shower filter doesn't make the water soft. I think you only get soft water if you have a water softener that adds softening agents into the water. A shower filter on hard water just makes it less hard. I have found that the products go farther and my hair feels better when the filter is working well, but not like with soft water where you don't feel like it is rinsing out easily. I have to replace our filters more often than the instructions say, though - like every 3 months rather than 6 months.

If you are concerned about how your hair feels or looks, i highly recommend doing an ACV rinse with a high ratio - i did 1/3 cup ACV and 2 cups filtered water. Pour it over your hair, coating all of it, after shampooing. Leave it on your hair for about 3 minutes, then rinse and condition. This made a huge difference for my hair! I do a lighter ACV rinse pretty regularly, but will do this demineralizing rinse once a month or so to combat all the minerals that get into hair (i don't think filters remove everything completely).

:)